Antrel Rolle was looking forward to returning to practice and lining up alongside Stevie Brown. The two have developed a rapport and have a feel for one another that's difficult to replace in a week.

To Rolle, the loss of his fellow safety transcends the depth chart.

"It's a huge blow. It's huge. For me personally, it goes deeper than football. It's really very unfortunate. It still hasn't really quite hit me yet," Rolle said. "But this is football. Unfortunately things like that are going to occur in this league. We're professionals. We definitely grieve over it. But we have to move on and make sure we pick up the pace even more. Guys have to step up. It's up to me to step up even more than I ever have before and be a leader, be a consistent playmaker, and make sure we do as well as we can."

Brown, as you know, suffered a torn ACL on Saturday and won't return this season.

Now the roles on defense won't be as defined. Ryan Mundy will slide in for the interim, and said that in the Giants defense, there isn't as stark a difference between the free and strong safety positions.

"It may change it a little bit as opposed to, you know, maybe me playing free or strong safety," Rolle said. "It's all going to depend on what the defensive coordinator wants me to do. Whatever they have for us to do, we'll get it done, there's no doubt about it, we'll get it done."

As far as when we'll see Rolle on the field, he said he's not sure if the Giants will chance it and send him in against the Patriots on Thursday. In all likelihood, he'll be back Week 1 against the Cowboys.